[Durito-dev] Re: HyperDE: need help?

[ahg]

Dear Demetrius Nunes and Daniel Schwabe,

First of all, thank you very much for writing and for looking at our
project, and for sending your paper. Please also accept my apologies for
not responding sooner.

HyperDE caught our attention about two weeks ago, in part because it
uses Rails to create an interface to Semantic Web data, as does (or
will) our applicaiton.

In addition--if I understand correctly--HyperDE (and SHDM) have as a
starting point theoretical proposals regarding knowledge representation
and user interfaces.

Unfortunately, right now we are working under a very strict schedule
that obliges us to have a collection of archival images and related
metadata publicly available online by the middle of December. Because of
this, I thought that now was not the best time to learn SHDM and study
that methodology and HyperDE more thoroughly; we already have a clear
enough idea of how the application we are creating will function, and I
felt that the surest course, for the time being, would be to simply
follow through with the implementation of that design.

However, this decision does not preclude future collaboration! Our
project will continue next year, when we'll have more time to study
proposals such as yours--and perhaps even consider ways of working
together, or making our work complementary.

One thing that you should perhaps note is that our project is rooted in
the Social Sciences and Archiving, as well as Computer
Science--specifically, we seek to create tools that (1) improve the way
Social Science researchers interact with primary source materials, and
(2) organize archival data in a rigorous, flexible and useful manner. A
few papers about the project are available from
http://durito.nongnu.org.

(In fact, a longer text just appeared in the Janary-June issue of Anais
do Musueo Paulista, published by the Museu Paulista de Universidade de
Sao Paulo.)

Of course, in this domain--as in any other--the attempt to create an
effective human interface to a complex knowledge representation stands
to benefit greatly from theoretical research into that process, and this
is, in the medium and long term, why it is important that we study and
understand work such as yours.

On a more specific note:

1) Perhaps in January we could analyse our system's current and future
interface and features using SHDM. (By the way, a partical mock-up of
our planned interface can be found at
http://durito.nongnu.org/maqueta3/prueba_interfaz3.html. Also, at the
end of
http://durito.alesoft.net/durito/attachment/wiki/DocumentacionDisenio/informe_etapa_VI.pdf?format=raw
is a brief description of functions to be added to the system in future
versions--note, however, that the rest of that document is a bit
outdated.)

2) Any comments or suggestions you have regarding any aspect of the
project would be extremely welcome. (You might even want to subscribe to
our developers' mailing list--see
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/durito-dev. By the way, I am
forwarding your messages and this reply to that list.)

3) I would like to understand specifically how your system replaces
Fresnel. How do you specify what data is displayed regarding a given
resource? How do you specify the transformation of complex graphs into
simpler structures? How does data ingestion/modification work, and what
mechanisms do you have for data validation? And finally, what
problems/limitations to you see in Fresnel?

Also, please let me know which language you prefer to use--English or
Spanish?

Thanks again, warmest greetings,
Andrew Green

P.S. It just so happens that two researchers involved in the Social
Sciences side of the project are currently in Brazil--Lourdes Roca and
Fernando Aguayo will be in Sao Paulo until next Friday or so.


> Hi Folks,
> 
> We´ve noticed some references to our open-source project, HyperDE, and
> we would be glad to help in any way if you do choose HyperDE as a
> suitable environment for (at least) rapid building a Durito prototype.
> 
> We would also like you to know that we´re starting as of this week a
> project for building a ontology DSL-generator written in Ruby, called
> ActiveOntology, for which the main objective is to create a DSL layer
> for easy manipulation of any existing ontologies (initially,
> supporting RDF or RDFSchema formats) thru Ruby constructs.
> 
> Let us know if you´re interested in taking part in that or need help
> getting HyperDE up and running.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Demetrius
> 
>